What is Psychoanalysis?
Today psychoanalysis is very familiar for the wide public after it has been either rejected or adulated for a long time. But, as a paradox, the success achieved for example in the fifth decade, especially in Europe, estranged it from its essence.
Psychoanalysis spread everywhere but not only due to the interest incited by its therapeutical method. It could even say that therapy was shadowed by the virtues of the applied psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis applied in literature, sociology, anthropology and ethnology, religion and mythology, incited the interest of a public that had no inclination towards the clinical realm.
Finally, psychoanalysis also distinguished itself through media using the most common means: radio, TV or film scripts. Famous movies put an emphasis on psychoanalysts. There was even a movie dedicated to Sigmund Freud which presented the incertitude years of his beginnings in psychoanalysis.
The multitude and complexity of the sources from which we receive today signals about psychoanalysis raise an important issue: psychoanalysis is no longer clearly defined in the eyes of the wide public. Today nobody knows for sure what psychoanalysis is and wants. Unfortunately no effort is made in order to clarify this crucial aspect
So we must clearly state right from the beginning what psychoanalysis is. Then we will follow the other steps in order to penetrate the mystery of this strange subject-matter.
A Definition
Psychoanalysis designates concomitantly three things:
1. A method of mind investigation. And especially of the unconscious mind;
2. A therapy of neurosis inspired from the above method;
3. A new stand alone discipline who is based on the knowledge acquired from applying the investigation method and clinical experiences.
Consequently there is nothing vague in the definition of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a specific mind investigation technique and a therapy inspired from this investigation. I would say first and foremost therapy in order to emphasize even more that psychoanalysis implies no speculation, that it is closer to psychotherapy and farther from philosophy, art or culture in general.
The psychoanalytical science that we were mentioning at the third point comes to light from Freud's famous study called Totem and Taboo, in which he launches himself in social and anthropologic analysis relying on the knowledge extracted from applying psychoanalysis to neurosis therapy. Who wants to know more about the speculative aspect of psychoanalysis must absolutely read the mentioned book.
Some important specifications
- Psychoanalysis is theSigmund Freud'screation.
- Freud lived most of his life in Vienna and died in London in 1939. He discovered psychoanalysis by synthesizing ideas and information coming from different, theoretical and clinical directions.
- Self-analysis, to which Freud was submitted himself, represented a big contribution to the birth of psychoanalysis.
- Freud was a Jewish neuropathological doctor who tried to set up a psychoanalytical movement with the help of non Jewish specialist in order to make his orientation more reliable. In this context he collaborated with outstanding personalities, such as, for example, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Sandor Ferenczi, and Wilhelm Reich.
- The psychoanalytical movement initiated by Freud went through a lot of ideological break offs and difficulties. Today it is inherited by a series of national or international societies that dispute their supremacy.
Freud's Quotes on Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is the name (1) of a procedure for the investigation of mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, (2) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (3) of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a new scientific discipline.(From Two Enciclopaedia Articles, 1923)
Psychoanalysis may be said to have been born with the twentieth century; for the publication in which it emerged before the world as something new - my Interpretation of Dreams- bears the date "1900". But, as may well be supposed, it did not drop from the skies ready-made. It had its starting-point in older ideas, which it developed further; it sprang from earlier suggestions, which it elaborated. (From A Short Account of Psychoanalysis, 1924)
Freud […] made an alteration in their technique, by replacing hypnosis by the method of free association. He invented the term "psychoanalysis". (From Psychoanalysis , 1926).
Original source: http://www.freudfile.org/psychoanalysis/definition.html